The Home-Based Revolution

Create Multiple Income Streams from Home

Martha Krejci

• Publisher: Beyond Words
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781582708485
• eBook ISBN: 9781582708492
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

The Home-Based Revolution gives you practical tips to overcome outdated ways of thinking about your life and career. Martha Krejci has implemented these techniques into her life with abundant success, and she now brings her wisdom to the page, teaching you how to build a home-based business that works for you, your family, and your lifestyle. Working mothers often feel pulled in many different directions at once: taking care of their child, maintaining a successful career, and doing it all with patience and grace. When working a traditional 9–5 job, it's easy to find yourself stressed out, anxious, and missing out on those important milestones in your child's life. No more!In The Home-Based Revolution, Martha Krejci shows you how to avoid stress and spend more time with those who mean the most to you by building a successful business from home. With humor and style, Martha shares the practical tips and wisdom she has learned in building her own home-based business so you can do it too. Join the revolution!

CHAPTER ONE Getting What You Really Want

I was working my leadership role at my corporate job, rising through the ranks, as one is supposed to do. Then I quickly found out I was actually making less money as I rose in the ranks. Because I was in sales, when I moved into management, I automatically took a pay cut as I was no longer making commissions. I was making less money and starting to feel more anxious. I saw my paycheck every two weeks, and I knew in my position I was never going to get more than that. MAYDAY!

I think every budding entrepreneur is always asking, “How do I get more?” That’s why a lot of us end up in sales. I saw this check week after week, and when I looked at it, I felt stuck. I was stuck.

Now let’s add onto that the fact that I experienced panic attacks about twenty times a day. Once they started, they went through twenty-minute cycles and just kept happening. For me, I literally thought I was dying during these attacks. My left arm would go numb, my hearing would go away, my vision would black out from the outside in, and I would get a metal taste in my mouth—all of it. Once when I lived alone, I went outside my apartment and sat on the stairs so in case I died, somebody would know. The stress just kept compounding, and I was exhausted. Needless to say, it was BAD.

One day at my desk I heard a message notification on my phone. I thought it was from my husband. We couldn’t have our phones out on the calling floor, so I went to the bathroom to take it, because that’s what you do when you can’t keep your phone on the calling floor, right? I went into the bathroom and, I kid you not, it was a video of my daughter taking her first steps. Everything stopped. It was like one of those Hollywood movies where everything went silent.

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My husband and I went through a lot to have our baby, Norah. Pokes and prods and medical intervention—I mean we REALLY wanted her. Our belief in having a child was that she was here to bless us as parents, but more than that, she was here to bless the world as a whole. Our job was to make sure she’s able to live from her heart; that was really important for us. I wanted her to be able to do that, but I wasn’t able to model it. It was soul-crushing to not be able to show her what that looks like, because that’s what I wanted for her. But if I couldn’t show it to her, she wouldn’t really see it and couldn’t really know it was available to her. I mean, at the end of the day, kids mimic their parents, right? And I wasn’t satisfied with what I was giving her to mimic.

All of my reality was right in front of my face. That was all that mattered to me. Watching that video in the bathroom felt like one of those touch-point moments everybody has at different crossroads in their life, where this was the deciding factor: Are you going to stay here doing what you’re doing? Or are you going to make a choice to do something different? It doesn’t have to be right or wrong, but you’ve got a choice to make right now.

I couldn’t take time off to go home and see my daughter because as a mom, you don’t have sick time of your own. You’re always using it to take care of your child. I had to go back to my desk and sit down. I felt like a caged animal. I kept asking myself, “Why can’t I just leave?” I couldn’t focus for the rest of the day.

I got home that night and said to my husband, Mike, “I can’t do this. I need to be able to work from home. We need to start our own agency.” I had a long history with the tech company I worked for and had soaked up the ins and outs of everything. It would be easy for me to use that and help clients on my own.

The dynamic between Mike and me is that I am the visionary with the flighty ideas, and Mike is the guy that holds the string to my balloon. He is on the ground allowing me to fly but making sure he’s got me. He was the one that was usually asking, “How are we going to get insurance? How are we going to be able to make this work?”

My reality was my in-laws lived with us, and I was the only one bringing in a regular income in that entire house. We were two households—including a baby—and I was bringing in the only substantial income, which also came from the job that provided the insurance for my family. Then I said I wanted to quit my job. (This is the part where you hold your breath.)

My usually very grounded husband looked at me and said, “If you don’t do this, you’re doing everyone a disservice.”

So let me remind you: this is my husband, who would normally be freaked out about everything, and he just said we should do this right now. That’s when I knew that where I was in life was okay, but I was definitely not going to trade okay for missing my daughter growing up. The balance was off, so we started our own thing, and that is when we began.

The cost of having that stable job, that corporate pathway, and the ascension pathway most people are following in front of me was too high. The cost was missing things important to my soul, like my daughter’s first steps.

Taking the Risk

In my new business, I was excited about waking up in the morning. What I was doing with businesses wasn’t new to me but having a business was. I tried to figure out how you do this stuff, and it was exciting, and terrifying, and then exciting again.

The very first day I went to a coffee shop instead of work. Oh, it was glorious! I drove past my work… and kept driving… to that coffee shop. That coffee shop symbolized freedom to me. It symbolized doing what I wanted when I wanted. This was my time—what I choose to do with it matters, as well as what I choose not to do with it.

After about a week at that coffee shop, the glory faded and I needed to get my stuff together, because nobody was making money and I needed to figure this out. That was stressful, but it was so much better than the stress I had before because I had control. I had my ethics intact and knew I could bring on clients and treat them right. Knowing that made everything better. That formerly debilitating, panic-attack-causing stress was now channeled into motivating stress, and my panic attacks reduced significantly.

My depression changed to excitement around the people I was going to talk to and the stuff I was going to make happen. In the back of my mind, I kept repeating to myself, “I’m going to show my baby. I’m going to show my baby. I’m going to show her Mom works hard and does the things.”

My relationship with my hubby, Mike, also improved. We worked as a team and he started learning a lot of things. He is in “God mode” with the Adobe Creative Suite (which really just means he can create anything possible in that software); he does all of the videos among other things. We really are a team together. We even got an office together where we would hang out, and clients could come for meetings and presentations. Norah also came sometimes. It was exactly what we wanted.

It helped our relationship that I wasn’t making all the money and choices. It evened things out, and we were so happy for Norah to see us share that.

Financial Freedom—My Advice to Those in a Similar Position

This freedom is absolutely here for everybody. It’s 100 percent something any person on the planet can have. You just need to tap into the right stuff and be around the right people. You need to learn things from the right people, because if you’re not careful, you can start down a path that looks like freedom but you end up not knowing what you’re doing and spending a bunch of money. That’s not freedom. That’s a different kind of slavery. You need to be mindful of the people you’re spending time with and who your mentors are. Your mentors need to be people who are where you would like to be, not people who just talk about where you would like to be.

A lot of people think they want to win the lottery, and they just want to have a bunch of money. But people really just need a couple thousand more than their bills every month. That’s what they’re really okay with. Of course, you can build out from there, but freedom happens even when you’re only $1,000 or $2,000 ahead each month. Sometimes people can do it with $500, especially when you haven’t had that breathing room in a really long time. There’s that deep sigh of relief whenever your bills are paid, and you have extra money beyond that coming in. Then you can start a savings account!

You don’t need to be a millionaire to have financial freedom; you just need a little bit more than what you spend every month, and if you can do that from home, even better, because then you have psychological and financial freedom.

Time Freedom—the Perfect Day

I always ask people I work with: In three years from now, what does your perfect day look like? It always looks the same. They wake up and have a coffee in peace and quiet. They have their kids at home with them. Some of them have a nanny with the kids. They work for a couple of hours, then go do whatever they want that day.

If they can build one of their income streams, they’ll be able to do that. Everybody desires to work for a couple of hours in the morning, then have the rest of the day to just sit and stare at the wall if that’s what they choose. God bless sitting and staring at the wall! I’ve done it, and trust me, it’s not a bad way to spend some time if you’re decompressing. Freedom is working just a couple of hours a day, making the money you need and a bit more—then much more—and spending the rest of your time as you please.

Interestingly, few people say they never want to work again. Working gives us purpose, so an ideal day includes doing some work you feel passionate about that is aligned to you, then having the freedom to spend time with our families or go for a walk on the beach.

Impact

My experience is when people are able to pay their bills and they have time, they start living from their hearts. They start serving the community around them in some capacity. I believe every human is inherently good. I believe people have different circumstances and things they go through that make them who they are and give them their worldview. All of that can be shed from anyone if they’re not lashing out because they’re scared, because they can’t pay their bills, or because they’re not giving their kids the life they feel they deserve. All of those things create an insane amount of anxiety that refers into how they treat their friends, families, and even themselves.

I believe that whenever people feel that deep breath of relief from having a little extra money and extra time, they’re going to serve their community. They’re going to find ways to give back. It could be paying for kids’ lunches or volunteering somewhere. Giving back makes humans feel good. Money isn’t the best part of the whole thing—the best part is being able to give back. You don’t find that out until you get there. But whenever you get there, the impact is the best part of all of this.

To have impact, you reach back into a fire that you’ve been through yourself, stand on the other side, and help pull the next person through.

I have a client who serves from her own background. She helps adoptees because she was adopted. She helps them process the trauma of abandonment that can manifest into different things. She goes back and helps them process that trauma, so it doesn’t hinder them in their life anymore.

I have another student who helps older people get moving. She’s a very physical person and strongly believes the more you move your body, the healthier you’re going to be overall. She helps older people back into moving instead of sitting on the couch, watching TV, and becoming increasingly unwell.

I have another mom student of mine with a goal to pay for all the kids’ lunches in the local school district. Just to pay it all off so the parents don’t have to worry about it. I have one student who is helping other moms to slow down so they can enjoy their kids’ lives, instead of blinking then it’s gone. I have another mom who is helping parents see their kids’ skill sets, then learn how to use those skills within the family. Nobody is stupid, but if you ask a bird to climb a tree, it’s going to believe it’s a failure, right? It’s about finding their skill sets and then letting kids excel and be a valuable resource within the family.

These people are having an impact on their worlds, and just imagine how good they must feel to go to sleep each night knowing how they are helping the people around them. That’s what this is all about.

Emotional Decisions

When I started this entrepreneurial journey, I wasn’t thinking about how big it could get. I was just thinking of what people needed. I was thinking, What can I teach people that they need to know? So, I started to teach what was working well for me. I was thinking, Okay, when I was back at this point, what did I need to know?

My thoughts were always about how to move this woman off of this swivel chair in a cubicle. How to move her out of that and into a place that she wants to be where she can thrive. I was just always trying to give resources and figure out ways that are going to get her unlocked from that space and get her into this new more exciting space. But so far as understanding the magnitude of this business, I knew where it could go. I certainly dreamed about it. I wasn’t getting too far ahead of myself. It is crazy how quickly it got to a significant size.

Initially though, I just wanted to know how I get this girl off a swivel chair and into something that feels much more heart-centered, much more congruent with what she wanted to do.

What were some of the things that got me off that chair? The answer may surprise you.

They were all emotional. I didn’t think that going into business for myself was going to be an emotional decision. I didn’t think I was going to be able to say I’m done with this old way of working, and then start taking action.

I thought that I was going to have to wait for this to line up with this, to line up with that, to line up with the other thing, and to have this perfect symphony of circumstances for me to make the big decision. If all of that came together perfectly, then I could do what I wanted to do.

What I realized was that I didn’t need to wait for circumstances to line up. The big breakthrough came from an emotional space—it came from seeing the video of my daughter taking her first steps and saying, I’m done. I’m finished with this, and I don’t want to miss another moment of my daughter’s life by being stuck in a job I’m not passionate about.

Then just moving from there and saying, I’m doing this. Your position is so much stronger when you move from an emotional space rather than a logical space.

The average person who wants to run a business, who wants to start their own hom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Foreword
• Ladies… It’s Time
• Chapter One: Getting What You Really Want
• Chapter Two: Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes
• Chapter Three: The Three Pillars of a Home-Based Revolution
• Chapter Four: Income Streams
• Chapter Five: Creating Communities
• Chapter Six: Attracting the Right People
• Chapter Seven: It’s Your Revolution
• Acknowledgments
• Additional Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright